Hey Glenn Beck, You Crack Me Up!

A month ago when I read that Glenn Beck planned to host his Restoring Honor rally on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s historic I Have a Dream Speech, I was so ticked off that I could spit nails. Next I heard that the ubiquitous Sarah Palin was scheduled to speak at the rally and my left eye started to twitch uncontrollably. When I learned that Dr. King's niece, Alveda King, also planned to speak at Beck's rally, I feared that my Aunt Dorothy's prophesy was about to be fulfilled and my head was going to explode.


However, there was no spit and no nails, the twitch is nearly gone, and my head is still intact. I temporarily forgot the basic rule for surviving encounters with the madness of those who attempt to rewrite history and reshape truth--never forget to laugh.

Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and Dr. King's hapless niece as modern day purveyors of the dream is just laughable. I was eight-years-old when King spoke at the Lincoln Memorial; his speech moved a nation. I know for a fact that Glenn Beck is no Martin Luther King, Jr. He's not even a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Beck is a pompous twit whose hour has come round at last, much like the beast slouching so ominously towards Bethlehem in The Second Coming. History is filled with charismatic charlatans who give winning performances before clueless audiences.

And the audiences...they fervently worship their idols, and the more those of us who see that the emperor has no clothes try to share that revelation, the more firmly entrenched they become in defending their idols from those of us who would dethrone them. Attacking Beck and Palin only elevates them in the eyes of their followers. The rest of us are the enemy.

Look at the language that they use; it's as if we are at war. "Take back our country;" "Restoring Honor;" "I want my country back;" "Defend our Constitution."

So rather than spitting nails, or developing a permanent tic, or having my head explode, I'm going to engage in a bout of laughter at Palin, Beck, and Alveda King trying to assert that Dr. King would have been at their side on August 28. I'm going to recognize that Beckolytes will not be swayed no matter how many times the rest of us try to tell them that their demi-god has feet of clay. When I'm done laughing, I'm going to renew my efforts to work on my local get-out-the-vote campaign. The way I figure it, the only sensible course of action is for those of us who have not drunk the kool-aid to take back our country.

Beck and Palin focus on one line from King's I Have A Dream Speech, the part about being judged by the content of our character not the color of our skin. It's certainly a part of what was said that day, but Dr. King never made pretty speeches solely about pie in the sky dreams; he always grounded his dream in a call for action. The following is also from that speech:

In a sense we have come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked "insufficient funds." But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check -- a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

A FARM GROWS IN NEW ORLEANS

Just when I think the weight of the ignorance, hate and corruption in this country will finally drag me into the depths of complete despair, a story or exchange will come to my attention and give me a glimmer of hope that all is not lost.

This morning it was the story of a farm rising from the ashes of the post Katrina Ninth Ward. Much of the Ninth Ward, the poorest area of New Orleans, remains scarred and abandoned by folks with too few resources and too little hope.

But take a few people like Brennan Dougherty, Kyle Meador and Donna Cavato, add a few youthful volunteers like Jake Feinman and Alex Epstein and a movement is born. On a recent weekend afternoon, the farm played host to a neighborhood festival. In the past, relief workers and volunteers would have outnumbered residents because so few had returned to the nearby streets. But on this day, dozens of locals attended.

These people have not formed an angry political mob nor are they a bunch of ineffectual “holier than thou” hypocrites. They have instead started a humanitarian effort that even has the drug dealers’ grudging respect. They have taken their trade elsewhere in order to increase the safety of the grown ups and children who operate the farm and the nearby Our School at Blair Grocery.

There is a large compost pile, fed largely by produce waste from a Whole Foods store that is nearly 15 feet tall and is called The Volcano. The farm not only raises organic produce and animals but it is a learning center for the area’s children who are gaining valuable lessons in proper nutrition and self sustenance.

"Growing good food is a lot like building a strong, diverse community," says Dougherty, who frequently conducts composting workshops. "Healthy food starts with rich soil. That's your foundation. Then you build up in layers. A strong community also needs a solid base. It requires diversity of materials, thought and action - the layers. Then you grow from within."

Our School at Blair Grocery: “Students are 15-19 year old African-American youth who have not found success in a traditional educational environment, and who need and deserve an engaging curriculum in a supportive environment. Our curriculum utilizes the best practices in education, offering learner-centered, outcome-based, transformative, place-based and feedback-driven teaching through experiential projects.”

There’s a lot of hope and joy in New Orleans these days.

Follow the link HERE to read the companion story.

Follow the link HERE to read about these innovative NOLA programs.

There are days when I think there is hope for the human race yet. Happy day everyone!

What Americans REALLY Want!

Oh, its obvious that the political tides are a changing but before those of you on the right get all bent out of shape over your perceived "win" lets look at some facts from a recent poll:

53% of Americans and a plurality of likely voters support the federal government providing aid to states and localities to avoid further layoffs and service cuts.  Or as this study found:

Provided even minimum context -- that some "300,000 teachers and other educational workers are potentially facing layoffs" -- support rises to 65-30, and over 60% of likely voters, with Republicans and independent moving dramatically in support.

54% of Americans favor allowing the Bush era tax cuts expire!  Oh, and this study found:

And by a stunning 68 to 28, voters say that cuts for Social Security and Medicare should not be part of any deficit reduction plan -- including over 60% of Republicans. Two-thirds of likely voters (65%) oppose raising the Social Security retirement age to 70 -- including two-thirds (66%) of Republicans.

Instead, over 60% of Americans choose progressive measures -- ending tax breaks for corporations that outsource jobs abroad, taxing excess profits on Wall Street, or lifting the cap on Social Security payments above the current 106,500 limit. By 54-31, they prefer higher taxes on the wealthy over a national sales tax that hits working people harder.

Americans are furious that Wall Street has been bailout out and Main Street remains in trouble.  Americans realize that the deficits were caused by bad political decisions:  Unfunded wars abroad, the bailout of Waltt Street, and special interest subsidies.  They can't understand talk of providing more tax cuts to the wealthy while cutting Social Security or raising the retirement age. In a time of Gilded Age inequality, they sensibly favor progressive taxes on the wealthy.

Americans are increasingly negative about the economy and for good reason.  While Americans are losing faith in Obama's policies and are souring on the Democrats in Congress they also hold Repulicans in low regard. 

2010 will be a PROTEST of Washington's failure not an endorsement of conservative priorities!

Amid the drumbeat of elite alarms about deficits, tea party fury at spending, Republican trumpeting of the "voodoo" of top end tax cuts and balanced budgets, most Americans haven't lost their heads. They don't want working families to pay for the calamity that they did not cause. They expect those who had the party to pay for cleaning up the mess. And they are looking for a plan that will rebuild America, not simply one that will sack government.

Six out of ten Americans favor the idea of rebuilding America and investing in new industries.  Or as this study found:

Six-in-ten voters respond positively to a broad narrative focused on resolving our public investment deficit in infrastructure. Investments in "roads, sewers, schools, trains, renewable energy and other basic parts of our communities" that would "create jobs, help business compete, improve our communities and generate revenues to pay down the deficit" makes sense to them. This message tests better than any other progressive message on investment as well as more conservative messages focused on spending cuts.

Or as the study's author concluded:

"Voters take the long view, seeing the need for both a commitment to a 21st century economy and long-term strategies to reduce the deficit. These are complimentary, not exclusive goals. Progressives need to show they are serious about the deficits, but once they do, voters turn to them, not conservatives, for the right spending priorities and answers."

Oh, I know lots of you believe I am a socialist....but as a small business owner I know that neither party gives a hoot about small business or the little guy.  Here is a great article about the reality of these business groups that claim to represent small business: Misrepresenting Small Business.

Forget Ayn Rand, but rather listen to the words of Adam Smith, the true father of capitalism.  The dysfunction that represents the policy debates we have today are clearly explained here:

We've been hearing a lot lately about the possibility of a double-dip recession. I do not know if we will actually go to a double dip or just substandard growth given the high level of underutilized human resources. But that is beside the point.

It is a very sad feeling, one that I had during the aftermath of Katrina, when the government reveals that it does not intend to respond to a crisis. It is a cold, dehumanized feeling. The tolerance of 9.5 percent unemployment, which is in reality a much larger number (say 15 percent) than the official numbers, is a symptom of dysfunction.

The dysfunction arises in part because of a failed vision. Society needs public goods and their repair. Adam Smith identified this in The Wealth of Nations. Education, schools, roads, and bridges are the lubricant of a productive society and there is no better time to repair or upgrade them than when you have slack resources that can be hired to address the task. Denigration of government's essential role has gone on too long. It is doing us harm. Yet it has roots in experience.

Our lockdown on spending is a symptom of lack of trust. It is also in part because our government is seen by the population as favoring large institutions and corporate power, not people. Given the choice between perceived corporate welfare that enlarges our future tax burden and curtailing the government, many people now opt for the latter. Not because people lack the desire for services, but because we do not trust our political system to deliver those needed services. See a recent Pew Reseach Poll, which illustrates the pervasive perception that government economic policies benefit Wall Street rather than Main Street.

The real dysfunction is the fact that those on the right while clamoring for freedom, liberty, and individualism are in fact mouthpieces for Wall Street and various other corporate interests.  As Rob Johnson states in a recent Huffington Post article:

We are amidst a breakdown. An irrational macroeconomic strategy and a nonsensical growth strategy is being chosen in a way that is perfectly understandable in a money politics-driven collapse of trust in government decision making. Deterioration of government services is bad enough, but imposing austerity due to lack of trust in a time of high unemployment and slack resources is tragic. It is a means to accelerate the decline of living standards of those who have taken a beating since 2007. Double dip or stagnation is too subtle a distinction. We are amidst an unfolding collective choice to pursue a downward spiral. I do not for a minute believe this will result in a lower debt/GDP ratio. I do see deflationary risks as a prelude to an inflationary response. Our leaders, showing their fear by responding to the fearful polling results are not leading. Where will this end?

Watching the antics of these politicians attempting to follow and not lead gives me pause...and makes me realize that the only true statesman in this country is Barack Obama.

Personally, I am tired of listening to the regurgitation of 30 years of stupid political rhetoric.  Unions didn't destroy our economy management did.  The facts are all around you and if you need more here are some good ones:  Rotten Apples, Core Values.

Oh, call yourself what you want but conservatives, libertarians, or whatever you are just Republicans and good luck in 2010!  Go ahead and follow Paul Ryan's "Road Map..." or just sit on your hands and do nothing for two years figuring it will pay off for you in 2012. 

You cannot stop the Republicans from going to war, from bailing out Wall Street and or from cutting deals with their special interest cronies....

Remember, our first crash ocurred in 1929 and FDR took office in 1933; I always believed that the Democrats should have allowed McCain to win in 2008 and allowed the Repulicans to muddle through for four years...

Americans have enough common sense to know that the 21st Century belongs to the Progressives and the Conservatives proved that over the course of the last 30 years!  Had the Democrats been truly Progressive then the election of 2010 would be a moot point.

Americans want to throw the democrats out of office because they remind them too much of Republicans......

Deficits and Economic Recovery (Full)

View more presentations from ourfuture.

Season of the Witch

The people who hate government, who talk as though we would become something like noble savages in its absence, who insist that all we need are free corporations, crowded jails, a bloated military and kangaroo courts to become a free and prosperous nation will, should that disaster overtake us at last, be entirely responsible for the poverty, chaos and oppression that will inevitably ensue.

Will the process that's been so noticeable since Nixon's retreat result in civil war, or will the collapse of government be as invisible as a black hole in the midst of the raging litigation now being planned by the Republicans to mark their return to power? The legal assault on Bill Clinton, that was retribution for the legal actions taken against felonious Richard Nixon and his corrupt administration, was notable for its attempted parity.

Charge for charge, and almost word for word, the Gingrich gang and its Starr inquisitor attempted to make charges of propositioning a woman payed handsomely to make them, and having asked his secretary not to tell his wife into impeachable treason. That the Democrats have again usurped their perceived mandate of heaven and taken control ( sort of) once again, plans are already being made to cripple Barack Obama as they did Clinton, come November 8th and never mind that Obama seems faithful to his wife -- it doesn't matter.

" Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Tex.) – are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s,"

says Politico today.

"How acrimonious things get really depend on how willing the administration is in accepting our findings [and] responding to our questions,” adds Kurt Bardella, spokesman for the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, who refers to his boss as “Questioner-in-Chief.’"

I'm assuming Obama won't readily accede to the inevitably trumped up and specious charges, but you never know, judging from his restraint in bringing up the GOP's singular failures, gross misrepresentations, war crimes and constitutional infractions, but acrimonious? That's as close to real humor as a Republican has ever come.

There are no angels in this dogfight, but the Republicans have an undeniable record of unrestrained, immoderate and rabidly vicious assault on all fronts when they're defeated and more so when that defeat is so clearly merited. They don't like rules except when the rules protect them. They love secrecy but decry it in others. They don't like taking responsibility for their failures, but find fault with anything and everything in their opposition and they don't give a damn if they're right or wrong as long as they gain power.

The November elections are only two months away, but the pyre is already under construction waiting only for the witch hunt to begin. It doesn't matter what Obama does or whether he succeeds or fails. I doesn't matter if he picks up every stitch, it's still going to be the season of the witch.

Big Brother's keeper

Tiger Woods named his Yacht "Privacy." It's obvious why he was seeking it, but we assume incorrectly that we have any right to privacy in these days of The Patriot Act and the mass marketing of fear.

Monitoring our phone calls, reading our e-mails -- that's old hat. Forcing us to produce birth certificates and citizenship papers for any cop who decides your car is weaving even if you're ancestors have lived in Arizona for 15,000 years -- coming soon to a Confederate State near you.

But wait, there's more.

Law Enforcement agencies are now adding vans equipped with side scan x-ray units that can inspect the contents of your car as well as the contents of your jockey shorts if you're walking down the sidewalk. Probable cause, my ass -- and yours.

Government agents can sneak onto your property in the middle of the night, put a GPS device on the bottom of your car and keep track of everywhere you go according to Time Magazine. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals -- the one Fox insists is so Liberaliberaliberal tells us we don't have a right to privacy if our cars are parked in our driveways. Search warrant? Don't make me laugh; they don't have to show you no stinking search warrant, at least not in the nine Western states under its jurisdiction, not to install the device or to use it to see who you visit or even how fast you drive . We have no reasonable expectation that the government isn't tracking our movements even if we pay cash at the gas station and at toll booths and don't use a cell phone. We're fools if we do.

Sound like a Libertarian, don't I? I'm not and I'm not because I am not blaming this on a straw man government, I'm blaming it on you. I'm blaming it on us. We voted for the people who are doing this, we supported the Patriot act, we wallow in the fear mongering the retailing of idiot rage that "justified" it. We fall for their distractions, their distortions and we bark and growl like Pavlov's dogs. When they push our buttons, we push their buttons on the voting machines.

Sure, the Ninth Circuit is Liberaliberaliberal, when they insist you can't use your religious beliefs to stop people from marrying, but they're not are they? They're not when they argue that your home is their castle as is your car, your mailbox and your telephone, and by pretending we're Conservative we vote for the people who appoint them to take our freedom and make us thank them for their trouble.

Dr. Laura and the N-Word Meltdown

I've been mulling over Dr. Laura Schlessinger's on air n-word meltdown for the past two weeks. My friend, writer Mark Olmsted, calls Dr. Laura's n-word rant a "positively orgasmic repetition of the word."

Dr. Laura's agitation with the black woman who called her show to ask for advice on handling racially insensitive comments from her white husband's white friends was very clear. She immediately suggested that the caller was overly sensitive to questions from her white husband's white friends asking her to explain all things black. Feeling that perhaps Dr. Laura didn't fully understand her concerns, the caller offered what she considered to be an egregious example of offensive comment.

CALLER: How about the N-word? So, the N-word's been thrown around --
SCHLESSINGER: Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO, listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger.
CALLER: That isn't --
SCHLESSINGER: I don't get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it's a horrible thing; but when black people say it, it's affectionate. It's very confusing. Don't hang up, I want to talk to you some more. Don't go away. (Follow this link to read the entire transcript or to listen to the audio.)

Jeez Dr. Laura, what's so confusing about this? The n-word was used as the most degrading insult that a white person could use in speaking to or of a black person for more than 300 hundred years. It was not ever used with affection by white people. I won't belabor this point. Thoughtful people already get it and trying to reach the lame-brained Dr. Laura and her clones is about as rewarding as trying to teach a pig to salsa.

What I don't understand is under what circumstances does Dr. Laura or any white person want to use the n-word? Is it a desire to be able to greet black people with a joyous, hello n-word? Or to demonstrate one's street cred by dropping the word in casual conversation? If you are white and feel that your freedom of expression is severely impacted by being unable to freely use the n-word, then I have a suggestion. Develop a close, affectionate relationship with a black person, and then ask your new BFF if it's okay to call him or her the n-word.

Clearly, Dr. Laura isn't alone in her resentment that there is a double standard when it comes to the use of the n-word. Comments abound from Internet users lamenting, "Why is it okay for black people to use the n-word but white people can't?" By the way, it appears to only be white people (not all, just some)
who are feeling deprived. I've never heard any Latino, Asian, or Indian people who are woebegone because they have been denied the use of the n-word.

In spite of Dr. Laura's repeated use of the n-word (11 times in under seven minutes), I find her use of the word to be the least offensive part of her comments. Her assertion that the only reason that black people voted for Obama was because he was half-black says far more about her racist assumptions than her fascination with the n-word.

SCHLESSINGER: No, no, no. I think that's -- well, listen, without giving much thought, a lot of blacks voted for Obama simply 'cause he was half-black. Didn't matter what he was gonna do in office, it was a black thing. You gotta know that. That's not a surprise.

What absolute arrogance to assume that her vast "black" experience has qualified Dr. Laura to identify any set of behaviors as a "black thing." She also tells the caller that it's the caller's problem that she doesn't have a sense of humor.

CALLER: I know what the N-word means and I know it came from a white person. And I know the white person made it bad.
SCHLESSINGER: All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Can't have this argument. You know what? If you're that hypersensitive about color and don't have a sense of humor, don't marry out of your race.

Perhaps I'm just humorless, but it has never crossed my mind to laugh at being called the n-word by a white person.

Dr. Laura appears particularly obsessed with the use of the n-word by black comedians on HBO; she mentions it more than once in her discussion with the caller. She takes particular offense at the notion of the n-word being restricted to use by only black people.

CALLER: Is it OK to say that word? Is it ever OK to say that word
SCHLESSINGER: It's -- it depends how it's said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it's OK.
CALLER: But you're not black. They're not black. My husband is white.
SCHLESSINGER: Oh, I see. So, a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can't do much about that.

The doctor is correct; there is a double standard. The n-word is loaded with history and all sorts of emotional baggage. White people don't get to say it to black people. That's what this is really about. If white people want to call each other by the n-word, I really don't care and I've never heard any other black person lamenting that white people are calling each other by the n-word. The prohibition isn't against using the n-word; it's against white people calling black people niggers. You can't say it because we won't tolerate it any more. What black people say to each other has nothing to do with it. I laugh at jokes in which black comics say the n-word because it's a shared joke, an insider thing. We don't have any problem with white audiences laughing at the use of the n-word by black comedians, but white people do not get to address us under any circumstances by that word, so get over it and move on to things of substance.

By the way, comedian Jeff Foxworthy self-identifies as a redneck and he's darn funny doing it. When is the last time you've heard black people getting all bent out of shape because we want to call white folks rednecks?

BRITISH PETROLEUM: BUYING SILENCE

UPDATE:  VIRUS WARNING FROM OCTOPUS:   Do not open any BP News notices from G-Mail or Twitter. There is an attached virus that will prevent your computer from powering up. Thank you, Libby of The Impolitic for the heads up.  Now, back to my post:

Since the beginning of the Gulf oil spill, several writers of the Swash Zone have posted articles on the disaster, which have apparently been NOTICED! Earlier this week, I received an eel-mail notification from Twitter informing us that British Petroleum is following our postings. Apparently, BP News is bogus (please heed the above virus warning).

In case you haven’t followed the latest news, BP is trying to enlist every marine science researcher, every employee of a marine science ecosystem center, and every academic from a college or university within a THOUSAND MILE RADIUS of the Gulf.  In exchange for money (read: a per diem consulting fee of $250 per day for a brief junket to the Gulf), BP has every chump and stooge sign a strict NON-DISCLOSURE AGREEMENT that subjects them to strict guidelines with respect to information released to the public or the media.  In other words, all information flow is subject to the control of BP!

Three weeks ago, National Public Radio (NPR) reported this story: By Hiring Gulf Scientists, BP May Be Buying Silence

University of South Alabama's Bob Shipp says BP's lawyers tried to hire his whole Department of Marine Sciences to do research for them. Under the deal, the scientists could disclose their results only if BP said so. Otherwise, they'd have to keep it secret for three years.

"They wanted the oversight authority to keep us from publishing things if, for whatever reason, they didn't want them to be published," Shipp says. "People were muzzled as part of the contract. They were muzzled, and certainly it's not something we could live with."

But professors from some universities, like LSU, Texas A&M and the University of Southern Mississippi, did accept BP offers.

This is happening where I live. Recently, several BP representatives contacted employees of the local Marine Science Center of Volusia County. I have friends working there, and this post will piss off a lot of people. I don’t give a damn! What pisses me off more is the sound of BP goosesteps marching in my backyard.

ANOTHER UPDATE: How timely! Here is today’s New York Times Op-Ed on the Gulf oil spill: A Gulf Science Blackout.

I will keep you informed as I learn more.

The price of freedom

It's something to give lip service to when you're proposing or conducting a war of aggression, preferably a hopeless, poorly organized one. When it comes to tolerating the views of others, the freedom of others: speech, religion and the rest of what the bill of rights guarantees, our hypocrisy comes shining through. Our cowardice, our irrational fear, our bigotry.

My thanks to Libby at The Impolitic for disgusting me with yet another view of America that will be broadcast around the world and justify more hatred of us and more acts against us and more revulsion at our pose of being a moral example. We're not and as Jefferson said " I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." If I were a believer, I'd be headed away faster than Lot could run out of Sodom.




It's infuriating that one of the bravest men I've had the privilege to observe was called a coward by a mob too cowardly to allow religious freedom in New York, cowardly enough to make disgusting religious taunts they'd never tolerate against themselves even if they were accurate -- which they would probably be. I tremble for my country. I tremble with rage at the bigots, the cowards, the enraged hordes of ignorant savages and I tremble at he dawning conclusion that perhaps we have no reason to be proud of America and that we've rarely been any better than this.

There is a price to be paid for freedom, but it can't be paid for in this kind of currency. It's not paid for by attacking Iraq or by supporting corrupt governments or toppling democracies abroad. It's certainly not paid for rioting against freedom and the allegedly sacred rights of man. If this is the voice of America, everything our enemies say about us is true and we have no right to pretend to be a moral example to anyone.

American blood on American Soil

Well maybe not blood - it was only some bits of stucco and brick, but you know. . .

President Barack Obama is "gambling with Human lives" says Texas Governor Rick Perry. I'm afraid he's not talking about any of our current foreign wars, and anyway, gambling with military lives is worth the patriotic fervor we need to keep the proles supporting Republicans.

He's not talking about the death cult that executes prisoners without much apparent concern for evidence of innocence. He's not talking about tossing out mining or oil drilling safety rules as "communism." He's talking about a stray bullet coming harmlessly across the border into El Paso from Juarez and hitting a wall, shedding American brick dust on American soil. It's happened once or twice before with no harm done to anyone, but it's Obama's fault according to the hysterical hyperbole of Rick because -- well just because.

Human Lives are being endangered because Obama is president and the failure of previous administrations to stem corruption in a country not our own is not worth discussing lest it place blame upon white shoulders, or heaven forfend; Texas gubernatorial shoulders and take all the fun out of our national game of "pin the blame on Obama." Yes, says Rick, we should amass troops on the border but to what effect he doesn't tell us. The drug lords we finance with our drug policies aren't going to notice or care. Perhaps they could form as a wall of human flesh to stop the spent bullet that strays over the border every few years? Or perhaps he'd like to invade Juarez, Tijuana and Nogales. After all we haven't stolen any property from Mexico for years and we really need another illegal invasion, don't we? We'd be protecting Amer4ican lives and we'd be welcomed as liberators and it would pay for itself and there are credible rumors of enchiladas of Mass Destruction. Remember the stray bullet! Never forget! wave more flags! Unhinged we stand!

Mosques, Muslims and Much Ado About Nothing

In a Sunday appearance on ABC's This Week, conservative George Will observed that the two-blocks-from-ground-zero-mosque-story is an August story, the kind of story used during a slow news time, the kind that is predicated on insensitivity. According to George, "sensitivity is overrated."

He's right of course, but there's more to this mosque  business than just a slow news time. Hell, if we used this kind of story as a yardstick for measuring slow news times, we would have been moving backwards for the past 30 years.

FACT: Muslims began arriving in this country, by design or by force, as far back as the middle 1700s.  Just think. It's a good possibility that Muslims were here before many of our white Christian ancestors.

FACT: What is most likely the first American mosque was founded in 1915 by Albanian Muslims in Briddeford, Maine. A Muslim cemetery still exists there.

FACT: During the 19th century, large numbers of Christian and Muslim immigrants arrived in the United States from Syria and Lebanon. Muslim farmers, peddlers and shop owners settled throughout the midwest. In 1934 the first mosque actually built in the U.S. was completed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

FACT: The estimated number of mosques in the U.S. is 2,000.

FACT: As of mid 2010, the Pew Forum estimated there were 1.57 billion Muslims in the U.S.

So, if my calculator is working correctly, this means that Muslims arrived in the U.S. at least 250 years ago. It also proves that the first mosque was founded nearly 100 whole years ago. And here we are in the year 2010 and Christians are just now bitching about mosques and Muslims? Where have they been all this time?

Don't get sensitive. Get real.

CORRECTION: Pew estimates the Muslim population in the U.S. to be 2,454,000.

Paranoia In The P.U.

I've taken to counting on my recumbent exercycle/TV news sessions at the gym for blog inspiration, which sounds lame now that I've said it out loud--kind of old womanish, kind of like somebody who doesn't get out much. Both true. Yesterday was looking like a bust for inspiration, a slow news Saturday, so my muse was taking a snooze. Until the man on the adjoining bike opened the door for me to a wormhole that links to the Parallel Universe.

Quick and dirty Jack Webb-style backstory:  Man older than me (I hope!), Dr. Koop beard, khakis and suede slip-ons (at the gym?). Cleverly disguised as a college professor, but wrong context. Fishy. Asked him if I could change channel from belly dancers to CNN (considering the location, it seemed safer than asking for MSNBC). He agreed, saying his source was usually FOX, but he didn't mind checking out leftist propaganda. Said he thinks everybody should open their minds to opposing viewpoints. Ignored him. We finished up about the same time and he started talking. Hate that.

Club Vulgus

Any perusal of comment sections on such public forums as CNN.com leads one to the inescapable conclusion that there is a vast sunless sea of people united by the conviction that their incomprehension results, not from some inability on their part, but from the stupidity of those they identify as a Liberal Elite. Being uninhibitedly glib in the facility of self promotion through Liberal bashing is a cheap initiation fee and all the dues they deed pay to belong to the only club that will have them as a member.

Reading this morning, for instance, of a rather uninteresting Van Gogh floral arrangement having been stolen from a Cairo museum and about suspects having been apprehended trying to flee Egypt, I encountered the predictable comments amongst which are:

"I am starting to think that Americans are the most entitled, dumb people on this planet. Are all Americans as dumb as this post implies? Or are you just the dumb liberals- who we always knew were dumb? If you are not happy with living in the USA then I will pay for you to move somewhere else. "

What an ugly picture! 50 million? covet much? Oh look, shiny baubles!!!! I MUST OWN THEM AT ALL COSTS!!!!"

More copy book comments followed in quick non-sequitur: about Republican lobbyists, the foolishness of art in general and other populist drivel scarcely worthy of having been scribbled on the walls of the worst toilet in Scotland, although I suspect the grammar, spelling and logic might be better in that venue. The rabble are only to happy to pay their dues.

Of course it is indeed a most uninspiring painting and it's proposed value would have been more appropriate to the late 1980's when Japanese corporations were buying up Western art and Van Gogh in particular, as part of a scheme to transfer money illegally between corporations. I doubt it could be sold at nearly that price today, yet still; one of the uncountable things that mystify the untaught crowd is art and it's monetary value. That which is not understood needs to be denounced as worthy of only fools -- and of course Liberals. If you want to belong to the Vulgus Indoctum after all, you need to pay your dues.

I wonder if one could earn life membership by offering to finance the expulsion ( as a Liberal elitist parasite ) of anyone who might distinguish between Van Eyck and Van Dyke or perhaps have a nice little solution for Fermat's theorem. I might in fact, apply for the deportation so kindly offered, but that any of these folk-slingers could afford the sort of place in Monte Carlo I have in mind, I have serious doubts.

The White House Blog: No Corporate Takeover of Our Democracy

Source: The White House

Sharia in Flori-Duh

I used to bridle at the popular smear: Florid-Duh -- after all I live here, but perhaps it's time to recognize that this smelly shoe fits pretty well and we can't avoid wearing it. My suspicion began back when a State Representative balked on passing a bill mentioning Animal Husbandry for fear it would lead to legalizing marriage between people and animals and now that I read about Daniel Webster, candidate for the US Congress, who is endorsed by the Orlando Sentinel and former Governor and Presidential brother, Jeb Bush as well, I have to confess. We're not just the Sunshine State; we're Flori-Duh.

Webster is no political neophyte and hardly an outsider to the Republican Party. He was Speaker of the Florida House, Majority Leader of the Florida Senate and was in the State Legislature for 28 years. While there, he introduced a bill which was meant to create something he calls "covenant marriage" and others have called the "Roach Motel Marriage." You can check in, but you can't check out. Under this law, so closely resembling what one sees only in Taliban controlled areas, there is no excuse for divorce except for the infidelity of one partner. If both are unfaithful, you don't check out. If your partner beats hell out of you, sets you on fire or molests your children, you live with it for the rest of your life. So much for the Republican fable that it's the Liberals looking to institute Sharia law in the US.

Certainly, the history of bizarre Congressional proposals is rich with idiotic attempts such as this, but remember, Dan Webster is not considered beyond the pale of modern conservatism, he's a favorite son of what's left of the Republican Party; a party not satisfied only to roll back all progress in human rights since the 1960's, but the 1860's and perhaps the 1760's. Don't forget the recent and still popular Vice Presidential candidate who spoke of Witches as a real problem or the elected officials who don't believe in evolution and think Geology and Archaeology are fraudulent.

If there are many of them who can smell the idiocy, they're too partisan to mention it and indeed, the ride they've been taking on the wave of superstition, suspicion and stupidity has taken them a long way and they're along way from giving it up. The wave never seems to break and it won't until we break it.

Beck's dangerous idea

It's marvelous that Charles Darwin still scares the hell out of people. Marvelous that is, if you're not convinced that our species has little survival potential because the peculiar adaptation to a changing world we share with no other species, is beginning to make it impossible to adapt to the changing world brought about by that adaptation. Human intelligence is a very new development and far from making us the pinnacle of evolution, it may yet prove to be another example of overspecialization making us vulnerable to extinction as our existence depends ever more on coping with an ever more complex world.

That we may have risen to the level of our incompetence, beyond the level of the average person's capability to understand invokes the Peter Principle. That there are people like Glenn Beck who thrive on breaking the tools we've used so get us this far, subduing intelligence and reason and critical facilities as well as the body of information we've accumulated, assures the eventual end of civilization and without civilization, we're not exactly the fittest things in the jungle, are we?

It may seem strange to cite Glenn Beck when talking about matters of intelligence, but it's no stranger than listening to him make that old and silly and certainly illegitimate claim that Charles Darwin is the "father of modern racism." It's an argument that can't be seen as such by anyone familiar with the modern, scientific concept of evolution or indeed someone smart enough to realize that Darwin didn't invent that process any more than Newton invented gravity or inertia making him culpable when someone hits you over the head with a rock. It takes, in fact, something more than Beckian stupidity and something more like mens Rea, as the lawyers call it: evil intent. Evil intent is a distinctly human property as Mr. Beck amply demonstrates. Darwin didn't invent humans.

Ask the moron on the street what Darwin was all about and he'll likely say "survival of the fittest" and he'll be wrong. He'll be unlikely to revise his opinion since the natural algorithm that produces speciation and biodiversity is more complex than he's willing or able to assimilate and the body of evidence might as well be buried on Mars for all he knows of it. Survival of the fittest is a flattering concept anyway, since we've survived so far and therefore can call ourselves fit and masters of all we survey.

It's a fairly short non-sequitur from there to "only the fit should survive" which of course is not Darwin and certainly not Dan Dennett but Republican, Conservative, Libertarian, Glenn Beckian. How better to describe the contempt and lack of concern for the helpless and unfortunate than to link it to the Scroogian "let them die and decrease the surplus population?" It's not Liberals after all who decry compassion when it costs us anything, it's Conservatives.

That evolution occurs and is the process through which all existing life forms have differentiated themselves from other life forms, right down to whatever primitive life-like chemistry preceded them, is not conjectural. It's not in doubt and not without an overwhelming preponderance of evidence. It's more solid, I could argue, than Newtonian physics, but the important factor is that it's not about survival of the fittest and doubly not about the idea that one racial or ethnic group needs to enforce the fallacy by persecuting another. Darwin is about an inevitable natural process and inevitable and natural things don't need enforcement.

The Nazis did not seek to eliminate other "races" than their mythical Aryan brotherhood because of Darwin or Huxley or any of the countless archaeologists and geneticists who have cemented evolution as a basic science -- they used a fallacious and mendacious misstatement of it because they were racists seeking scientific basis, just as Glenn Beck does. Make no mistake, I give the comparison in all seriousness. Fake science, bad science and specious arguments lie behind many movements, most of which are highly dangerous. The public hasn't the brains or the knowledge to see through it and many who have have been hypnotized by one Svengali after another.

Using a fake simulacrum of science to bolster animal instinct, putting a stolen lab coat on greed, bigotry and racism does not serve to smear real science. In fact as Glenn Beck uses such tools to burn science in effigy he may be making stupidity an important survival factor.

WITH A WHIMPER NOT A BANG

Last night, the Iraq War ended with nothing to celebrate. Seven years and five months later, as the last combat brigade crossed the border from Iraq into Kuwait, the war ended with a whimper although 50,000 advisory personnel will remain behind for another year. After 4,415 American fatalities, 32,000 American wounded, millions of Iraqi casualties, the countless broken lives and wasted treasure … Mission Unaccomplished has been one long, tortuous saga of arrogance, incompetence, and stupidity bordering on criminal.

When our Vietnam veterans returned from war, they were vilified as proxies for the villains who sent them there. This time, we avoided the injustice. This time, we hurled our contempt at Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bremer but honored our troops.

Awarded a second Bronze Star

I have good reason to honor our troops. My oldest daughter is an Iraq War veteran. She served in 3 deployments, each ranging from 15 to 22 months. War is a daily hell for the folks back home, a palpable anxiety that never goes away, dreading every knock at the door or telephone call in the middle of the night, the empty place at the holiday table, the person missing from every birth and funeral - seven years and five months of Family Life Interrupted.

Christmas 2006

I consider myself lucky. My daughter came home alive and intact. Tens of thousands of families were unlucky. Later I learned of the near misses - her barracks destroyed by a rocket while working overtime, nightly mortar fire, the roadside bomb that blew apart her colleagues and almost claimed my daughter, who scarcely recovered from flashbacks and nightmares before she was deployed yet again.

Christmas 2007

What has this mission accomplished? Iraq is a nation in ruins. The criminals who prosecuted this war will never be held accountable.  Ashes mingle with pollen. A police state has risen in the east. Again, our public square fills with indignant desert birds clamoring for new blood. There is nothing to rejoice, and the wine is too bitter.

Dawn over Baghdad

The ownership society

So now it's "Obama's Mosque" and why the hell not, since there appears to be no bottom at the deep end. All the hysteria about the "most far left liberal politician since Trotsky" has all the traction of a bald tire on a wet road as Obama panders to the right, the Birther blowhard, Orly Taitz, would up in contempt of our most conservative high court and the legion of dire prediction demons has failed to infect anyone but the swine. We didn't fall into a deep depression and slowly, most things are getting better. Half the TARP funds have been repaid at interest. No army has poured across our weakened borders into the arms of Obama, the flow of illegal aliens has diminished and deportations are up substantially despite all the howling. Obama isn't rounding up Republicans, we haven't turned the army over to the UN, and yes, his ratings although they've fallen since he was elected, are still better than Ronald Reagan's.

Of course the predictions of recession that were denounced as treasonous by the right wing chorus during the previous administration did come true, the reasons for the most expensive war in our history were false and the benefit of the radical tax cuts not only failed to materialize but produced no new private sector jobs and earned us a 8 trillion dollar loss. But enough of that liberal America hating treason -- it's Obama's fault for bailing out US business, even though Bush asked for more money and less oversight. It's Obama's fault and the Mosque that isn't actually a Mosque located in what isn't the World Trade Crater in a neighborhood with a substantial Muslim population and where there's already a Mosque must be shown to belong to Barack Hussein Obama.

And why not? They're already snickering that he isn't Jesus Christ and if he were, I'm sure they'd make sure the analogy was perfect. It's Obama's Mosque and when that blows over, there will be some other idiotic calumny and on and on, while there continues to be nothing useful and nothing that hasn't been debunked or proven disastrous coming out of the racist right wing rabble of hare brained hooligans posing as patriots.

So now it's Obama's Mosque as if his predecessor hadn't spent far more time in them, praising (to his credit) Islam and Muslims as a religion of peace and peaceful people and good Americans. It's Obama's fault and they'll take back America: xenophobic, imperialist, feudal, monopolistic, theocratic, undereducated, over opinionated, 'we're number' one America where Beethoven is a dog, Michelangelo is a virus and a Mosque that isn't a Mosque is Obama's and a recession that isn't Obama's is.

How Do We Topple The Great Wall Of Ignorance?

The right has continued it's relevance not through good ideas and sound policies, but through polishing an image of itself as America loving, commie Muslim hating patriots. It has made obstructionism and Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" it's mission statement. Straight, from the heart answers are big no no's for them.

In my city these is a republican alderman who I can't remember ever giving a straight answer on anything. He has made saying "I have concerns" his catch phrase. It's won him two elections. In my area republican is the voter's default setting. "They're for low taxes, more guns, God and less government. Aren't they?"

How do you sway people who think in these terms? They believe if you're a Democrat then you're a baby killer. And these people are easily worked up into believing ridiculous accusations enough to vote against whomever they're made against.

They voted against John Kerry because he was an "egghead, elitist Ivy Leaguer." Unlike Bush who was an average Ivy Leaguer we'd drink beer with.

This may sound sneaky and unpatriotic but I'm thinking instead of busting our asses trying to reach these people through facts, logic and a history of republican hypocrisies, maybe we should either try appealing to them through meaningless rhetoric as the republicans do. Or even better, convince them their votes won't matter anyway. Far easier to appeal to apathy and laziness then actually make the closed minded think and act.

The more I think about it, this looks like the best strategy. Convince the closed minded to stay home on election day. Tell them that's how they can send their message. Not that they know what their message is.

America's "Toughest" Sheriff One Mean Machine

Writer Aura Bogado spent five months investigating how Phoenix Sheriff Joe Arpaio's tactics affected Latino residents who make up 31 percent of Maricopa County's population. She interviewed citizens, legal immigrants and undocumented residents about encounters with deputies and police. "It got to the point where I raced home in a panic one morning after heading out for a jog without ID—what if a deputy, seeing a Latina running down the street, decided to haul me in?"

Arpaio doesn't count sheep at night. He counts Latinos and three Latinos are three Latinos too many. His ego is bigger than his paunch, so even after a restless night's sleep with nightmares of brown men refusing to shine his patrol car, he still has the energy to do a cheap imitation of John Wayne for the media.

But Arpaio is no Grade B actor in a Grade B movie playing the part of the bad guy. He is the real thing - a malicious brute. He uses chain gangs, deliberately humiliates inmates by forcing them to wear pink underwear, houses prisoners in tents with temperatures of over 110 degrees,  and, he makes sure medical care is only a dream.

To say that Arpaio is obsessed with immigration is to say that a ballet dancer is obsessed with staying fit and trim.

Before SB 1070, there was Arizona's "coyote statute," which made it a felony to smuggle people for profit in the state. Just like a western of days gone by, Arpaio organized posses of citizens and lawmen to roundup undocumented immigrants. "I'm not going to turn these people over to federal authorities so they can have a free ride back to Mexico," he told the Washington Times. "I'll give them a free ride to my jail."

Besides being innately cruel, the sheriff is astonishing arrogant.

Last fall, without explanation, the Department of Homeland Security rescinded Arpaio's authority to arrest people under section 287(g)—although deputies can still check the immigration status of people arriving at the jails. In anticipation of the crackdown, Arpaio held a press conference. "We have arrested 1,600 illegals that have not committed any crime other than being here illegally," he boasted. "The secret is, we're still going to do the same thing—we have the state laws, and by the way, we'll still enforce the federal laws without the oversight, the policy, the restrictions that they put on us." 

Bogado tells the story of Native Americans who told her that they were often mistaken for Latinos. Alex, not his real name, was at a Circle K while his parents waited outside.

He ran out when he heard a group of Arpaio's deputies yelling at them to produce their papers. Then, Alex said, they demanded to see his ID, too, explaining, "The law says everyone here has to be legal."

Alex is a third generation US citizen.

Then there was Celia Alejandra Alvarez, who told Bogado that sheriff's deputies broke her jaw when they raided the landscaping company where she worked.

Álvarez said she was denied adequate medical care during her three-month detention—a common complaint that has been the subject of hundreds of lawsuits against Arpaio. Even after surgery, she added, her jaw still isn't back to normal—during our interview she paused periodically to readjust it. (In 2008, the National Commission on Correctional Health Care yanked (PDF) Maricopa County's accreditation, saying its jails failed to meet national standards.)

Bogado tells about "Maruillo,"  a construction worker who has lived in this country without papers for 21 years. His two children are US citizens.

He said his family was camping at a lake over the Fourth of July weekend in 2008, when a fellow camper started yelling something about "too many Mexicans" and called the sheriff's office. The deputies, Maurilio and his wife told me, threw him down in the presence of his six-year-old son and shoved his face into the ground. They then yanked his head up by his hair and pepper-sprayed him as they cuffed him. After a few weeks at Durango, he was deported—and immediately headed to the desert to walk back north.

Perhaps the most gut-wrenching story of all is the one about David de la Fuente who was arrested for driving with a fake licence and no documents. He was hauled off to Arpaio's notorious Durango Jail where he was charged with a fake ID. A short month later de la Fuente was dead.
When he arrived at Durango, de la Fuente became ill and began deteriorating rapidly. He told his cousin and sisters that "the guards kept dragging him back and forth between the prison yard (where temperatures reached 107 degrees) and the frigid jail—leaving him queasy and disoriented."

He also complained of severe chest pains, but fearing the guards might retaliate, told his family not to press the authorities about his condition. Eventually, de la Fuente was hauled before a judge, who fined him and put him on probation for giving an alias to the police. After three weeks in custody, he was turned over to federal immigration authorities, who delivered him the next day to Nogales, Mexico, about 700 miles north of his hometown. By that time, he was gravely ill.

He arrived in Colonia Emilio Carranza three days later, stumbling and barely able to speak. His family got him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with acute pneumonia. Based on the stage of his illness, the doctors determined that de la Fuente had contracted it about 15 days earlier—roughly a week into his jail stay—according to medical paperwork and an interview with the hospital director. The doctors did what they could, but de la Fuente was too far gone. His cousins and a sister stood vigil as he dwindled and eventually fell into a coma. He was pronounced dead on June 23—exactly four weeks after the traffic stop.

De la Fuente's cousin, Norberto Alvarado Santana, fights tears and stares out into the vast horizon near his cousin's grave.

This past September, during my visit to Colonia Emilio Carranza, Norberto Alvarado Santana said littleas he showed me his cousin's grave, in a humble cemetery adorned with plastic flowers and Virgen de Guadalupe figurines. A stout, reserved man, he measured his words cautiously before finally breaking the silence. "There's a word for what happened to my cousin David," he said. "It's homicide."

Yes you can, no you can't

Private morality does not seem to me to be the state’s business unless it compromises the public welfare.

-Bishop Shelby Spong-
_________

Yes you can, no you can't, yes you can, no you can't. It must be infuriating for California's same sex couples looking for stability and security in their lives. Gay marriage opponents have again succeeded in blocking further unions pending yet another appeal for reasons known only to themselves -- although most seem happy to tell you why they're against it.

Do the objections make sense or are they simply a reflection of a selective morality with perhaps a bit of personal anxiety adding a note of passion? The appeal that came quickly after the judicial decision to overturn the ban tells us that

"California, 44 other states, and the vast majority of countries throughout the world continue to draw the line at marriage because it continues to serve a vital societal interest."

And what would that social interest be? Why,

"to channel potentially procreative sexual relationships into enduring, stable unions for the sake of responsibly producing and raising the next generation."

Astonishing, isn't it that the conservatives behind this can still make a living challenging the right of the State to serve social needs while advocating it so vociferously in this instance. Doesn't Social Security and Medicare and welfare and don't income taxes serve a societal interest? Is there any evidence anywhere of a negative effect on the public welfare of allowing gay marriage?

Sure, I could ask silly questions about why older couples past child producing age are allowed to marry or people who don't want to or are unable to have offspring are exempt from the Biblical mandate to go out there and get pregnant. I could ask why the State of California can find a right anywhere in its constitution or the Federal Constitution to promote Christianity and I could snicker at the fact that it really doesn't matter whether people are married -- they make babies anyway and I could point out as well that stable, married gay couples seem to do as well if not better at raising children, but we both know I wouldn't get a sensible answer because the position isn't about any of those things. It's about a personal repugnance concerning the private behaviour of other people with its origins in a religious tradition not recognized or supported by the government of the United States. Preventing a social contract between same sex couples serves no more legitimate a societal interest than outlawing interracial marriage, segregating public facilities, keeping Jews out of Palm Beach hotels or preventing women from voting. Yet that same rhetoric was used to defend those things and worse.

Pace the nauseous nattering of people like Sarah Palin and a large number of Republican hypocrites, there is no clause in the constitution saying "insert the Bible here." The objections are an excuse and nothing more and they are neither supported by facts or reason.

Another frequent argument is that the court which overturned the ban was " ignoring the will of the people" which of course is part of the job description of the legislative branch; that being another bulwark against the mob rule our founders were so rightly worried about. That is, or should be embarrassing to those who have made careers bloviating about "activist judges" since what they're calling for is a judge who rules on personal and political sentiment rather than a strict interpretation of the law. Is this hypocrisy or duplicity? Does it matter?

Marriage isn't about breeding, it's about property and responsibility and the right of one person to care for another without legal hindrance. The law isn't about bringing a Christian or Jewish or Muslim utopia to the world in preparation for it's destruction. I agree with bona fide Libertarians that the role of government in promoting some vision of public good needs to be limited and its ability to intrude into the most private and intimate parts of the human experience needs to be restricted to matters of the utmost need. There is no need or evidence of need here. There is no logical or factual consistency here and the allegedly conservative position isn't conservative. It's everything conservatives tell us they hate: an intrusion into life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness by a self appointed group of moralizers. Morality is not the government's business. Sin is not the government's business: It's God's business. God can handle it.

Democrats and the Art of the Impossible: Mosques and Morons

RE Sam Stein's article "Harry Reid: Mosque Should Be Built Somewhere Else" 

See, this is why it's sometimes hard to respect Democrats, even if you are one as I am, and you're trying so hard to respect them that you're burning lean muscle, not just fat.  I thought the President's remarks on the near-Ground Zero mosque issue were acceptable -- after all, it isn't his job to pronounce sentence on the "wisdom" of building any kind of house of worship anywhere.  There's a good constitutional basis for the attitude he's struck up.  But I can't be that generous about Harry Reid's remarks -- I rather like old Harry Reid and the word "moron" in my post title doesn't refer to him but rather to mosque-haters, but to me, the statement cited in the article just sounds like caving in to idiocy and xenophobia. 

Democrats do that a lot -- they never seem to learn that when you compromise with utter knaves and raving imbeciles, there's no arriving at a middle ground that makes you look like a practitioner of the fine art of the possible that is politics.  You end up tumbling down the rabbit hole and into the abyss, where your only consolation will be to recollect ad infinitum Sam Johnson's wonderful line, "Delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation."  If I didn't enjoy reading the Inestimable Dr. Johnson so much, I'd say that's pretty poor consolation.

Hört die Stimme

Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme.

It's calling, but in dreaming's other kingdom, you do not hear.



Wachet auf, weil in diesem kleinen, hervorragenden Moment, hören Sie die Stimme.

Born Again Christian Says Tea Party is Un-Christian

Claims to the contrary, the Tea Party is not Christian. Every time I've said this over the last few years a "believer" would look at me with shock and horror. I could hear whispers of "blasphemy" as this cold, hard, withering stare washed over me. I was almost forced to look down to be sure the buttons on my blouse hadn't popped open to expose a bare mid-section. (More text follows)

Tea Party Jesus

Writing for the Texas Observer, born-again Christian Katherine Dobay explains why she believes the Tea Party is un-Christian and exposes the "hypocrisy of Tea Party members who claim they are defending Christianity -- a way of life they don't follow."

Nowhere in the New Testament does Jesus exhort his followers to be nationalistic. All that Jesus said regarding the political state was that we must pay our taxes. Believers ought instead to be patriots of heaven, as Paul explains in Philippians 3: 20 "For our citizenship is in heaven..." Nor did Jesus instruct his followers to stem the tide of what the world considers progress by force . . . . For the end times we are told only to prepare for Jesus' return by keeping ourselves in fit spiritual condition. In fact, Jesus reserved his direst warnings for members of the church themselves, whom he warns against false teaching and ear-tickling;* even love of country can be an idol or a kind of heresy if placed before love of God and fellow man. (emphasis mine)

. . . Jesus clearly states that only those of his children who do his will, that is: feed the hungry, give water to the thirsty, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked and visit prisoners and the sick, will receive the reward of eternal life. The good news we are told to spread in the Great Commission is not the gospel of economic doctrine or political philosophy. . . . Some of the fruits we can expect when we do God's will include love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. That sure doesn't sound like the Tea Party rally to me! When we disobey God's will in favor of our own however, the results can be anger, greed, division, strife, gossip, ugly speech, hatefulness, and every manner of uncleanness.

We have seen some fruits of the Tea Party movement which many consider a dangerous faction exploiting tough economic times and the fears of suffering people to prosecute a political agenda. In seeking to control and manipulate a society they claim to be "saving", they are only succeeding in tearing it apart. Individuals in the Tea Party who claim to be Christian have a lot of explaining to do, for biblical teaching is full of calls to submit to secular authority, trust in God, and to pay taxes. "Pay everyone what he is owed: if you owe the tax collector, pay your taxes; if you owe the revenue collector, pay revenue; if you owe someone respect, pay him respect; if you owe someone honor, pay him honor" (see Romans 13: 1-7). No exceptions were allowed. Paul did not say to pay only as much as you feel is right. He did not say you could feel sorry for yourself to the point of open rebellion. He did not say submit only to those authorities of whom you approve, but said to give respect where it is due. The president of the United States is owed the respect of all Americans.

. . . Isn't it ironic that early Christians under pagan Roman rule flourished in holiness and martyrdom, yet today some Christians manage to feel persecuted while living in the greatest democracy in history and enjoying material blessings undreamed of by their distant kin? . . .
Now, I am the first to admit that I get very uncomfortable when anyone claims "Jesus said" for the same reason I am uncomfortable when someone says "Shakespeare meant." How do we know what someone said or meant based on writings that are centuries old, and in the case of the Bible, have eight to fifteen different versions? How do we know which writer's account is accurate?

For the most part, members of the Tea Party do not under any circumstances represent what I was taught and what I consider to be Christian. I was instructed in tolerance, forgiveness, love, peace and helping those less fortunate such as those who have experienced a major catastrophe - an earthquake, hurricane or tornado. Above all I was taught that God loves all his creations.

My grandmother, an unusually intelligent and independent southern woman, and a Methodist minister cousin of mine, always opined that people who wear their religion (and patriotism) on their sleeves are anything but. I believe it's called hypocrisy.

Having said that, I respect Dobay's opinion and applaud her courage to denounce the Tea Party's hypocrisy - especially since she lives in a little town of 7,000 in the Texas Hill Country. As we've seen all too often, people in that part of the world can get hurt if they don't think right.

*ear-ticking myths: "Once saved, always saved." "No sin or doctrinal heresy will keep you out of Heaven. Fornication is permissable." Remember that Newt.

Another final solution?

During WW II the Germans were the bad guys and the French were the good guys, right? Well, some of them certainly were and some of them certainly still are, but if we're looking for another example of the banality -- and universality -- of the hidden but still present nastiness in apparently civilized nations, the examples are everywhere. Examples of the kinds of sentiments that brought us the persecutions, deportations and atrocities my parents' generation went to war over.

No, I'm not talking about the increasingly hostile attitude toward non-aryan immigrants in the American South, but about France and the European Union of which it's part. The Nazis ( and the Inquisition in its time) were less successful in eliminating the Roma, or the Gypsies as it was once more common to call them, then they were in eliminating the Jews or Europe.

Now that travel within the EU has been made so much easier; a basic right of European citizens, France has many Romani camps and that bothers many Frenchmen who are eager to attribute all kinds of mayhem in good old Lou Dobbs fashion. French President Nicolas Sarkozy seems happy to raise his poor ratings by pandering to that good old European Family Value of racism and ethnic prejudice. He plans to break up some 300 camps in the near future and send the Roma back to Romania because of "security problems." As yet, I haven't heard talk about re-establishing them in their ancient homeland in Rajasthan, but maybe that's still too touchy a subject just now.

France isn't the first to expel this wandering group who have appeared as bogey men in a thousand years of European folk lore. Germany Denmark and Italy, for example are instituting similar policies of attributing selected offenses to a group and punishing that group with expulsion rather than individuals actually accused and found guilty. It's doubly disturbing because, of course, Romanian citizens are normally free to reside in EU countries, or so I'm told.

Perhaps enough time has passed that the embarrassment of being caught at the same old Collective Guilt by Ethnicity game isn't enough to make EU member countries circumspect. Certainly that's true in the US where most citizens can't clearly remember as far back as the Bush administration, but equally certain is that looking for ethnic scapegoats in times of economic trouble is not something that died in a Berlin bunker in 1945.

Becoming the monster

I'm old enough to have learned to delay anger at any reports about or coming from the area formerly known to some as Palestine. Initial reports are so often untrue or exaggerated that caution is always advised. If it is true, of course, that the government of Israel has caused part of a Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem to be bulldozed, my anger is going to be well into condition red -- the more so if, as has been reported, the demolition is related to the construction of a Museum of Tolerance planned by the US based Simon Wiesenthal Center.

So I'll hold my temper a while longer although I fear that Nietzsche's warning about becoming the monster you set out to fight may be waiting to make a comeback.

Terrorists win! Terrorists win!

It's hard to say they didn't and their victory has nothing to do with the incompetence that let Osama bin Laden escape from Afghanistan. What can you call it but a victory when we've borrowed and wasted trillions on wars that we simply can't afford and we've been torn apart politically and culturally to the point where we will defend the indefensible, accept the unacceptable and every passing cloud seems like a piece of the sky falling.




Nearly nine years after the attacks on New York and Washington, the World Trade Center towers have become like the relics of some saint to be preserved in some myth if not in a jar while the contrived phrase "they hate us for our freedoms" echoes in mockery while one by one, the freedoms we pretend are a reason for their resentment are put against a wall and shot -- by us.

Any war, just or unjust, aggressive or defensive, necessary or the result of lies, is a test of the freedoms of speech and of the press. This alleged war has been a test of freedom from unreasonable searches as well, but now even freedom of religion is being tested both in the legislature and by the propaganda organizations with seemingly unlimited money, power and influence over the rage addled minds of the public. The millions of riders on the New York Transit system will soon be reading ads showing yet another picture of the twin towers and an airliner along with a crescent. Why There? it asks. Because we have freedom of religion, I answer. Because the government may not legislate against the free exercise of a religion or determine that one religion is to be preferred over another, I say to the ignorant, uncaring mob and the sinister forces that play them like pawns.

Does anything support the myth, popular in Islamic countries, that the US is out to destroy them and to kill Muslims better than this ad, this attitude, this anger? Of course we're eager to engineer Armageddon and so are they. Of course the Terrorists have won, since to bankrupt and confuse us and weaken us and set us against our principles and best interests was exactly what they set out to do. A popular uprising against justice and the rule of law has been the goal of many but none has been so successful in my lifetime as what has been accomplished by bin Laden and the Neocon Republicans with the aid of various radical supremacist groups foreign and domestic.

Why there? Well to be truthful it isn't there, only near there, but the answer is the same as it is to the question of why we didn't forbid radical Christian churches in Oklahoma City or the political anti-government speech that brought about the Federal Building attack and continues to fester. Because we all have the right to worship without interference from anti religious groups and from the government. That would be the government that's supposed to stay out of our lives, but only if we're of an approved religion.

We don't forbid KKK meetings even in neighborhoods full of people the Klan hates. We allow Tea Party extremists to wave guns at political rallies and threaten the lives of the president's family and to overthrow the government by force. We allow Christian churches to preach about the coming destruction of the Jews, the infidels and the end of the world anywhere they damn well please. But they're not Muslims, as a rule.

Our founding fathers offered praise for Islam, told Muslim leaders this was not a Christian country. There have been Muslim citizens in this country for centuries. There are millions of born in the USA Muslims in civilian and military life. When you take away the rights of one citizen for illegal reasons, you take away the rights of all and indeed if "they" hate us for being free, they're effective in making us less so and with our eager cooperation.

There's a bell tolling for us, for our freedom, for our souls and that thing up there in the steeple, wrapped in the flag and ringing it doesn't look anything like Osama.

PP13B and The Skeptic's Question

I adore Scientific American magazine. I try to read it from cover to cover, even if I don't always understand what I'm reading; when it comes to certain arcane, formula-heavy articles on string theory or particle physics, I keep hoping exposure will work a miracle in my brain. So far, nothing on that score, but it's been a SciAm-rich day and I just had to share it with you...big questions, and all.

This morning, as I hacked away at the biomass in our yard in the fast-rising heat and humidity, I listened to a SciAm podcast of the July 28th Northeast Conference on Science and Skepticism's panel discussion entitled, "Arguing With Non-Skeptics." While it probably doesn't sound it, this two-part podcast is funny. Smart and funny. A distinguished panel of skeptics (a.k.a. atheists), including James Randi, D.J. Grothe, George Hrab, Steve Mirsky (my SciAm back-page fave), is moderated by Julia Galef. They discuss whether they ever enter into arguments, discussions, or debates with non-skeptics and how they handle it. Back to this in a moment.

A shower later, I finished Curtis Marean's SciAm piece, "When The Sea Saved Humanity." Armed with the knowledge that our global human DNA points back to common ancestry that is traced to Africa a little over 195,000 years ago, Marean went looking for an area on the continent where a small group of the first humans might be able to survive the long glacial age, which began at about 195,000 years ago and lasted until roughly 123,000 years ago. Where could a few hundred Homo Sapiens have stayed alive and continued to reproduce successfully when most of the continent of Africa had turned too dry and cold to support them? A new species already endangered; what were they like?

In a cave named PP13B on the coast at the tip of South Africa, Marean and his team found not only a perfect spot, rich in shellfish and edible flora year-around, but also answers to questions they hadn't known to ask. They found fossil evidence of compound tools, including spear points that required heat treatment to produce, at the deepest levels of the PP13B dig--demonstrating at least intermittent use of fire for tool-making dating back to 164,000 years ago. Previously, the earliest heat treatment had been attributed to France and was believed to have arisen only 20,00 years ago...a mere 144,000 year update.

The complexity of the steps required to produce the sophisticated tools indicate that language was needed to pass the technology along from generation to generation--another date pushed back. And there was also evidence at the deepest layer of the cave of shells collected for their decorative qualities and of red ocher "paint." Art, in other words. Merean writes,

"For years, the earliest examples of these behaviors were all found in Europe and dated to after 40,000 years ago. Based on that record, researchers concluded that there was a long lag between the origin of our species and the emergence of our peerless creativity.

But over the past 10 years archaeologists working at a number of sites in South Africa have found examples of sophisticated behaviors that predate by a long shot their counterparts in Europe....These sites, along with those at Pinnacle Point, belie the claim that modern cognition evolved late in our lineage and suggest instead that our species had this faculty at its inception. " (SciAm 08/2010)

We could say that H. Sapeins was born sapient and used that cognitive potential to survive the long ice ages, rear children successfully, and eventually thrive once the glaciers began to retreat. Returning to the DNA evidence, it now makes more sense that the entire global species could have arisen from a small genetic base in Africa. And it is conceivable that they eventually encountered their own differently-evolved number amongst the Neanderthals in Europe--who may not have been of a different species at all, but that's another article in this issue of SciAm, and another blog post.

Now, back to those funny skeptics at the Science and Skepticism conference.

As I read these SciAm articles about the Pinnacle Point people, I had that rising bubble of excitement we get when a eureka moment makes us want to tell everyone what we've learned. And then I remembered how I handle it--or rather don't handle it--when I encounter folks who believe humans were created around 6000 years ago. Or, for that matter, when I encounter folks who believe all kinds of unscientific fantasmagoria. 

I'm a Backer-Off-er. Especially now that age has tarnished my silver tongue and concepts flee as fast as the names of celebrities, I consistently fear that I won't represent my own knowledge or the scientific perspective well. I'll dummy up just when I want to sound my most rational, logical, and knowledgeable. I'm also afraid that my Southern upbringing, which taught us girls to button our lips in order to survive, will kick in just at the moment when I need it least...or won't kick in when I need it most.

So, how do you handle it when you find yourself in real conversation with creationists? Or with folks who believe in woo-woo stuff? Do you ever try to convince that person to question their certainty? Do you shut up and go all polite and distant, visions dancing in your head of Thanksgivings yet to be spent in the company of this idiot?


And how, if we've been cognitively sophisticated for 164,000 years, can some folks still be so unintelligent?

Check out that podcast for tips, comebacks, and the very best in great nerd humor. Makes me think I might be able to help someone see things differently.

The view from Pinnacle Point Cave 13B